Life, 1929-04-26 · page 21 of 36
Life — April 26, 1929 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine contains several satirical vignettes about 1920s New York society: **"Manhattan Mary Quite Contrary"** depicts a woman on a ship throwing French postcards overboard—mocking the common scam of selling tourists cheap postcards of Parisian landmarks instead of the promised risqué "French postcards" (euphemism for pornography). **"Story of the Week"** jokes about baseball star Babe Ruth's legendary appetite, describing his massive consumption of corned beef and cabbage at a golf club. **"Our Own Believe it or Not"** satirizes Prohibition-era enforcement under NYC's Parks Commissioner Grover Whalen: two drunk college boys parked outside a speakeasy wake to find their car being towed, exemplifying the absurdity of aggressive parking enforcement during the Prohibition era. **"Polo without the Horses"** (unclear reference without additional context). The cartoons capture Jazz Age New York humor: tourist gullibility, celebrity excess, Prohibition hypocrisy, and bureaucratic overreach.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
New York Life on the street, and with a wicked gleam in his eye, informs you that he has some dendy French post cards... you hand him fifty cents (no, I didn’t tuy any! I heard about it) and when you look eagerly in the envelope you we some very fetching views of the Fiffel Tower, the Place de la Concorde, ete. and muttered “Gosh, the old bus is sure takin’ this __ hill pretty sweet!” DAS de> Polo without the horses Story of the Week Babe Ruth re- cently visited the Bonnie Brier Golf Club... after a round of golf he had lunch and put away a large portion of corn beef and cabbage . . . the head waiter then asked him if he wouldn’t like Manhattan Mary Quite Contrary Fur Bearing Animals Another stunt among the wise boys 's to hock their raccoons for as lit- tle as possible and thus save the cost of storage during the summer months. Our Own Believe it or Not During Grover Whalen’s recent drive against parkers, in which city trucks jacked up the front ends of cars and towed them away to the police sation, two college boys, much the worse for prohibition, fell asleep in their car while parked in front of a speakeasy . . . they awoke to find the front end of their car jacked up in the air and being towed rapidly away +++the first collegian, who shall be tameless, looked up, rubbed his eyes, some dessert and the Babe said “Yeah, I'll have another order of corn beef and cabbage!” Manna-About-Town Paul Whiteman played “Valencia” over W. O. R. the other night and I know it was just for me... thank you, Paul! . . . apologies to the Cin- ema Guild for not seeing their elec- tric sign . . . Lee Chumley’s down in the village . . . Odd MclIntyre’s new hat... Phil Wylie’s new book “Babes and Sucklings” ... he mis- takes grossness for virility... still another revival— “Under the Gas- light”—let’s “have no more! comicbooks.com